Monotone (software)

Monotone is a software tool for revision control licensed under the GNU GPL.

Contents

1 Features 2 Releases 3 Platforms 4 Support 5 Author 6 See also 7 External link

Features

Like GNU arch and unlike Subversion, Monotone takes a distributed approach to version control. A unique feature of Monotone is that instead of using version numbers for each revision, it uses SHA-1 hashes to identify specific files or groups of files.

Although Monotone originally supported a variety of networking protocols for synchronizing trees, it now exclusively uses a custom protocol called netsync, which is more efficient. There is no separate Monotone server because any Monotone client can act as a server, in accordance with the end-to-end principle.

Other features of Monotone include:

• Good internationalization and localization support
• Portable design, implemented in C++
• Signing of revisions using RSA certificates
• Easy to learn, due to a command set similar to that of CVS
• Good documentation

As of April 2005, possible drawbacks of Monotone include:

• Less mature and popular than competing systems such as GNU arch and Subversion
• Slower than some comparable SCM systems
• No support for traditional communication protocols like SFTP
• A lack of GUI interfaces

In April 2005, Monotone became the subject of increased interest in the FLOSS community after Linus Torvalds mentioned it as a possible replacement for BitKeeper in the Linux development process.[1]

Releases

• Version 0.18 was released on Monday, April 11th 2005. It contained performance improvements and bug fixes.
• Version 0.17 was released on Friday, March 18th 2005. It contained bug fixes and additional features.

Platforms

Monotone is released as source and pre-built binaries for several platforms, including:

• Linux x86/glibc 2.3
• FreeBSD x86
• Windows XP
• Mac OS X
• Fedora Core 3 x86
• Debian x86

Support

Currently support for the software is given on mailinglists and IRC.

Author

The primary author of Monotone is Graydon Hoare.

See also

• CVS
• GNU arch
• SCM

External link

• Monotone Homepage